Teddy Armstrong
Theresa "Teddy" Armstrong is a freelance journalist, certified lawyer, and mother of Sammy Armstrong. Early Life Teddy was born to Vincent and Imogen Armstrong, an accountant and police officer respectively. However, she was raised by Vincent's brother and his wife, because she and her husband agreed that Teddy would be safer with them after the two received a threat from one of Imogen's old enemies. Teddy grew up believing that her uncle and aunt were her parents and vice versa. Murder of Imogen Armstrong When Teddy was ten years old, she left her home without permission and went to Imogen's place of work to see her "aunt". However, she ended up witnessing someone shooting her "aunt" in the head right in front of her, causing her to scream and flee the scene. She made it back home and fearfully told her "parents" what she had seen. They then called the police. Because of Teddy's testimony in the subsequent trial, her "aunt"'s supposed killer was brought to justice and imprisoned, but not before Cassandra warned Teddy that her family was "made of mysteries and not above lying to keep them secret". Her "parents"'s over-the-top insistence that Cassandra didn't know what she was talking about made Teddy somewhat suspicious, but she eventually dismissed her doubt on the basis that her "parents" knew best. Plane Crash For Teddy's fifteenth birthday, Gregory and Rachel took her to South Africa on holiday. On the way back, their plane was hijacked just before landing by an at-the-time-unidentified attacker, causing the plane to crash in the countryside, leaving only one survivor: Teddy. She managed to survive the initial impact and was rescued from the subsequent explosion by a mysterious woman whom she wouldn't learn the identity of for nine years. She woke up in a hospital bed a week later, where she was told that she was the sole survivor, meaning that her "parents" had died in the crash. She spent over three months in the hospital, recovering from her injuries and trying to cope with her grief, before she was released and sent to live with Vincent Armstrong, the man whom she believed to be her uncle. Alexander and Sammy Teddy met Alexander in group therapy in the aftermath of the crash. They quickly became close friends and eventually started dating when they were seventeen. Two years later, Teddy discovered that she was pregnant by Alexander. They mutually decided to keep the baby, and Alexander even offered to marry Teddy so that they could become a proper family. Despite knowing that she was not completely sure whether she was in love with Alexander or not, Teddy agreed to this, and they were married that same year. Teddy went into labour on her exact due date, and a healthy baby girl was born. They decided to give the baby a girl's name that would be shortened to a boy's nickname, like "Theresa" to "Teddy", so the baby was named Samantha and nicknamed Sammy. With support from Vincent, Teddy began to raise her baby. However, Teddy and Alexander began to argue in the months following the birth. It was exacerbated by Teddy's postnatal depression and Alexander's occasional alcohol abuse, coming to a head when Alexander stormed out following a massive argument, leaving signed divorce papers behind. Teddy waited for him to come back but he never did. It took only a week for Teddy to realise that he had abandoned her and Sammy, and she was devastated by this. She tried to track him down via his family, but they had moved house a few weeks prior and she was unable to get in contact with any of them. Finally, she signed the divorce papers and Alexander became her ex-husband. Early Law Career In the five years between the plane crash and Sammy's birth, Teddy had begun to study law, hoping to become an attorney. Part of the reason for this was her estranged friend's desire to become a prosecutor and the very harsh brushing off that the aforementioned friend had given her when she tried to ask why. Another part of the reason was that she had a passion for justice and didn't want to see people suffering under false charges. However, when Alexander walked out on her and baby Sammy, Teddy realised that she could go back to studying law and maybe even become a lawyer, despite being a single mother. Still living with her "uncle", she continued to study law while she and Vincent shared parenting duties. She passed the bar exam aged 21 and was thrown into her first case just a month later. She successfully stood up to an infamously tough prosecutor and, while she didn't manage to win the case, she still achieved a sense of pride that she had done fairly well in her first trial. Unfortunately, her second case happened to be defending her "uncle" from a false murder charge. The prosecutor completely obliterated her defence, and Vincent was found guilty. If this wasn't enough, he committed suicide on the way to the prison, leaving Teddy devastated and utterly guilt-ridden over failing to save her "uncle"'s life. She immediately hung up her badge and refused to continue practising law. Freelance Journalism After resigning from law, she realised that she now had no job, was a legal adult, had a baby to look after, and had no family to support her. She gained some financial support from Veronika Novák for a few months while she got back on her feet. After a while, she turned her hand to journalism. After writing an impressive piece for a local newspaper, she gained requests from other newspapers and journalism companies. Choosing to operate freelance so that she could work from home and look after Sammy at the same time, she started earning her living as a freelance journalist, without even having been to university or gained a degree. Even though she vastly enjoyed the work, she regretted that her law career had gone nowhere. Reunion At the age of twenty-four, she was called upon as a character witness for one of her most frequent clients, who had been accused of murder. While she was at the courtroom, she found out that the prosecutor was none other than Veronika Novák, who was up against famed lawyer Esperanza Reyes, the latter of whom recognized Teddy immediately. After the trial, Esperanza visited Teddy in her home and requested her help in solving a case. Teddy responded that she was no longer practicing law and even described herself as a failure, but Esperanza reminded her that she had gone toe-to-toe with Daniel Moon a few years earlier and had come out unscathed. She asked Teddy to at the very least help investigate the case, to which Teddy reluctantly agreed. Old Wounds The case that Esperanza needed Teddy's help with was, to her shock, the case of her "aunt"'s murder. Esperanza had secured evidence that confirms Cassandra Sharpe's alibi, meaning that it wasn't possible for Cassandra to have done it. Despite Teddy's reluctance to reopen such a painful case, she agreed to help. Esperanza, Teddy, and two of Esperanza's co-consuls went to visit Cassandra in prison. She reaffirmed her alibi and told Teddy that her so-called "motive" was fabricated by the prosecutor of the case, and that she was told to go along with it in order to get a lighter sentence. Teddy found out that the prosecutor in charge of Cassandra's case was Daniel Moon's older sister, who had moved away to India a few years before. Teddy and Esperanza talked to Daniel himself about what he knew of his older sister's activities during the trial, but Daniel was unable to tell them much more than "Emma didn't care about the truth; all she wanted was a conviction." After investigating further, Teddy called for a retrial of the case, on the basis that she had new evidence to present. She even managed to call Emma Moon herself to prosecute. Even though she was hesitant about passing the blame onto someone she knew was innocent, she played the part of Devil's Advocate and indicted Daniel Moon for Imogen Armstrong's murder. She presented the evidence that she had found, including a card with a crescent moon symbol on it, and stated that Daniel--who had been fourteen years old at the time--had both a motive and no alibi, whereas Emma--the other Moon connected to the case--had no motive and an ironclad alibi. Finally, her painful risk paid off: to save her brother, Emma confessed to the murder. She told the court that she had murdered Imogen as part of an alliance with an old enemy of the cop's--the same enemy whose threat, unbeknownst to Teddy, led to her parents giving her up to her aunt and uncle. Emma had framed Cassandra by planting evidence, benefiting because she then prosecuted Cassandra in court, adding another win to her record. That person then supplied her with an alibi, ensuring that the crime would not be traced back to her. When the judge handed down a not guilty verdict, Cassandra collapsed in tears at the witness stand, finally free after fourteen long years. Joining Reyes & Co. In the defendant's lobby after the trial, Teddy was watching Sammy play with one of the bailiffs when Esperanza approached her and congratulated her for catching a murderer and freeing an innocent woman in the process. Teddy responded by telling Esperanza that she was utterly disgusted with herself for indicting an innocent man on the charge of murder, knowing full-well that he hadn't committed the crime. She told Esperanza that she didn't belong behind the defence's bench, to which Esperanza replied that she still won the case, despite it being only her third trial and her first in three years. Esperanza then offered Teddy a job at Reyes & Co. as a part-time lawyer and journalist, stating that she could use her skills. Teddy told Esperanza that she would consider it, before taking Sammy and leaving. Outside the courtroom, Teddy bumped into Cassandra, who was admiring the sky. Teddy apologised for the fourteen years that Cassandra had spent in prison, to which Cassandra responded that it didn't matter anymore. After introducing Cassandra to Sammy, the former implied that she had known Teddy's family very well. Before Teddy could ask about it, Cassandra left. Teddy then returned to Esperanza and accepted the job offer, beginning a long stint in Esperanza's organization. Blossoming Career and Relationships During her first two years at Reyes & Co., Teddy got to know her co-workers and began developing friendships with them. As well as this, she began falling in love with Esperanza. Although both of them knew that they were the same people involved in the plane crash nine years prior, neither of them brought it up. However, despite growing closer to Esperanza, Teddy never discovered much about her past, due to the lawyer's refusal to talk about herself. Teddy also took on many cases during her first two years under Esperanza's guidance. She went up against Veronika Novák and Daniel Moon many times, though the latter has never quite forgiven her for accusing him of murder. It was during this time that she also met Warren Rockwell, a veteran prosecutor, and Hector Wilson, an up-and-coming young prosecutor. She beat both of them on more than one occasion, but most of her defeats in the two years were at the hands of either Warren Rockwell or Veronika Novák. Learning The Truth Just over two years after acquitting Cassandra Sharpe of Imogen Armstrong's murder, Teddy was visited by Veronika Novák, who told her that she had found the person who had conspired with Emma Moon to kill Imogen--a man named Bradley Shaw--and that she wanted Teddy to stand with her at the prosecutor's bench to help her convict him. Teddy agreed, seeing the chance to properly put the incident to rest once and for all. However, during the trial, Shaw revealed that Teddy was not Gregory and Rachel's daughter; rather, she was the biological daughter of Imogen and Vincent Armstrong and had only been given to Gregory and Rachel to raise because of Shaw's own threat. Since Shaw couldn't find Gregory and Rachel, he had to resort to monitoring Imogen so that he could find the opportunity to murder her, before he teamed up with Emma Moon. He hadn't realised that Teddy was Imogen's daughter until he happened to be watching the retrial and had seen Teddy prove that Emma was Imogen's killer. Teddy initially didn't believe him, but Esperanza--who was behind the defence's bench purely as a formality--surprisingly confirmed Shaw's story. She revealed that she had looked up Teddy's hospital records and discovered that the names on her birth certificate were Vincent and Imogen, not Gregory and Rachel. She confessed to Teddy that she hadn't told her sooner because she knew the revelation would crush her. Betrayed, Teddy fled the room without waiting for the verdict. Esperanza caught up to Teddy outside the courthouse after the trial and told her that Shaw had been found guilty. She attempted to apologise to Teddy, but the latter pushed her away, saying that if she knew that Teddy had been lied to about her parentage for her whole life, then Esperanza shouldn't have kept it a secret, because now she was "as much of a liar as they were". She ordered Esperanza to leave her alone but didn't wait around to see if the attorney obeyed. Teddy then visited the graves of Vincent and Imogen. She had realised by now that this revelation meant that the woman whom she saw get shot right in front of her was her mother and the man whom she had failed to save in court was her father. To her, this made her failure even worse, and she confessed to her parents' graves that she had no idea what to do now. As she was leaving, she bumped into Veronika Novák, who was there to visit the grave of her older brother. Veronika reminded Teddy that, even though she may not be able to fully trust anyone again, she was still a licensed lawyer and had a promising career in front of her. Teddy realised that Veronika was the only person she could actually trust so, after thanking her, decided to head back to meet with Esperanza. The two lawyers met outside the courthouse. For the first time, Teddy thanked Esperanza for saving her life and told her that without her, she would have died without discovering the truth. After affirming that she will take a bit longer to trust Esperanza again, Teddy confirmed that she would be returning to Reyes & Co., to Esperanza's pleasure. Taking On An Apprentice A year after rejoining Reyes & Co., Teddy took on the case of a teenage boy called Donnie Danvers, who had been accused of theft. She successfully proved his innocence, then discovered that he had just passed the bar exam but had no experience and nobody would hire him. So she got Esperanza to hire him, then she took him on as an apprentice and brought him into trials so that he could gain experience. He soon impressed her with his fearlessness, and though she was put off by his recklessness at first, she soon realised that this made it easier for him to avoid getting intimidated by prosecutors. Attempted Murder x2 Aged twenty-seven, Teddy began investigating Cassandra Sharpe, who seemed to be making some dodgy deals with known criminals. It came to a head when she was shot in the chest by Cassandra's cousin and fell into a coma, leaving her unable to identify her assailant. Cassandra was accused of the crime but Donnie defended her against Veronika Novák in court and successfully found the real culprit: Ryan Sharpe. When Teddy woke up from her coma a few weeks later, she also identified Ryan as her attacker. A few days later, Ryan managed to engineer another murder attempt from his prison cell. While Teddy was driving Esperanza and Sammy to a crime scene to investigate a case, the brakes on her car failed and they crashed, resulting in Esperanza breaking both her legs, Sammy suffering a concussion and a few broken ribs, and Teddy suffering serious injuries from the resulting fire. Through a paper trail, Donnie again managed to prove Ryan's guilt. Rock Bottom After the car crash, Teddy grew weaker. The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from both of the crashes that she had survived was getting worse and she distanced herself from everyone, even her own daughter, for fear of them getting hurt again. She hadn't realised how much this was affecting those close to her until Esperanza visited and told her about Cecelia's suicide attempt. This new guilt and fear nearly destroyed Teddy but she stayed strong for her daughter's sake and even recovered enough to take on a new murder case. However, this case soon took a dark turn when she realised that her client had lied to her about tampering with the crime scene, betraying her trust. She managed to get him a not guilty verdict for murder but because of the added stress, she had a panic attack at the defence's bench and almost completely stopped breathing, nearly dying. It was only the timely intervention of Veronika Novák that saved her life. Trapped With the help of her friends and family, Teddy recovered from her mental trauma and began trying to move on. She focused on her career, her relationship with a healing Cecelia, and her daughter. Unfortunately, an encounter with the powerful businesswoman Vanessa Fox soon threatened to send her back into a downward spiral. Vanessa killed one of her business rivals but was soon arrested for the crime. However, she had her sister Michelle kidnap Sammy and threaten to hurt her if Teddy didn't get Vanessa a complete acquittal. With no other alternative, Teddy was forced to go up against Veronika Novák, who sensed that something was wrong but didn't know what. Nevertheless, Veronika did not give Teddy an easy time, and Teddy was again forced to accuse a completely innocent person of murder in order to get her client off. Thankfully, during a recess, Teddy was able to get a secret message to Esperanza, who rallied the Reyes & Co. workers to find Sammy. During the second part of the trial, Teddy tried to stall for time to avoid a murderer getting away with their crime but was unable to, and Vanessa was found not guilty. Before court was adjourned, Veronika demanded to know why Teddy was so unhappy with the result. But Teddy was unable to say, so Veronika let it go. Outside the courtroom later, Teddy and Sammy were tearfully reunited. Veronika, who witnessed this, put two and two together, and ordered the police to discreetly search Vanessa's home. A few days later, Veronika visited Teddy, who was in a state of deep depression and in danger of regressing. Veronika informed her that they had discovered a piece of evidence in Vanessa's house: a CCTV tape that had been missing from the trial. It showed Vanessa committing the murder. So Veronika had demanded a retrial and had successfully proven Vanessa guilty, stating that "the attorney Vanessa roped in at the last second to defend her was certainly no Teddy Armstrong". This brought Teddy out of her depressed state and she asked why Veronika had searched Vanessa's house. Veronika replied that she worked it out from watching her reunion with Sammy. After thanking Veronika profusely, Teddy was left in a much better mental state. Survivor's Guilt A year after Sammy was kidnapped, Teddy went up against formidable prosecutor Randolph Moon, Daniel and Emma's father. She managed to beat him, later citing his anger at her for convicting his daughter as the reason for his loss. She soon moved on from this case but Randolph did not. Unbeknownst to her, he began plotting her downfall. He even arranged the scene of a murder to implicate one of her clients in an effort to tarnish her reputation, but she still managed to prove her client innocent. Finally, his desire for revenge led him to poison two cups of tea in the courthouse cafeteria. One of them was taken to Teddy, while the other was taken to Hector Wilson. Both of them were rushed to the hospital in a critical condition but only Teddy made it through alive. When she found out about Hector's death a few days later, she began to suffer from survivor's guilt, wondering why she survived but he didn't, despite both of them drinking the same amount of poison. It wasn't until after Veronika managed to secure a conviction for Randolph for his crimes that it was revealed that Hector's immune system had been significantly weaker than Teddy's due to a specific immune system disease, so the poison had affected him worse than Teddy. In the aftermath of this incident, people close to Teddy expected her to become depressed again. However, they were pleasantly surprised when she returned to work very quickly, looking no worse for wear. The reason for this, she told Donnie, was: "I can't keep letting things pile up. I've survived so much in my life and I'm not even thirty years old yet. Yes, I'll always feel some modicum of guilt that I indirectly caused Hector's death. But I'm done letting everything overwhelm me." The Student And The Teacher Finally, two years after beginning to study under Teddy's tutelage, Donnie took on his first case alone. Teddy was right there next to him at the defence's bench as he took on Daniel Moon, who made constant jibes about Donnie's "incompetence" and Teddy's "betrayal" of him. Nevertheless, Donnie still managed to defeat him, making Teddy very proud. A few weeks later, Sammy began acting as Donnie's co-consul, to Teddy's delight. Even though Sammy was only ten years old, she provided valuable insights and helped Donnie win more than one case. Although Teddy stopped helping him at the defence's bench, she never missed a trial of his, and often gave him encouraging advice from the gallery whenever he needed it. Relationships Sammy Armstrong Sammy is Teddy's daughter, four years old at the time of Teddy starting work at Esperanza's firm. They have a great relationship; Teddy is Sammy's only parent due to her ex-husband walking out on them, so she has to do enough work for two parents. Esperanza Reyes Esperanza is Teddy's boss and the former object of her affection. She saved Teddy's life after the plane crash that killed her aunt and uncle, keeping her stable until the ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital. They met again nine years later, after Esperanza asked Teddy for help on a case. Teddy then came to work for Esperanza, falling in love with her slowly over two years. However, when it was revealed that Esperanza had kept a vital secret from Teddy for those two years, Teddy was devastated. She managed to forgive Esperanza eventually, but their relationship was never the same. Veronika Novák Veronika and Teddy used to be friends back in primary school. They ended up going to separate secondary schools and didn't meet again until Teddy was called by Veronika to be a character witness for a defendant. Veronika is part of the reason why Teddy wanted to become a lawyer in the first place; the former's passion for prosecuting ignited a spark inside the latter, which resulted in many courtroom battles between the two, of which Teddy normally emerged the victor. They have a close friendship out of the courtroom, though Veronika's standoffish nature sometimes causes Teddy to doubt their relationship. Cecelia Toff Cecelia and Teddy met at Reyes & Co. after the latter accepted a job offer from Esperanza Reyes herself. It took them a while to connect due to Cecelia's closed-off, reserved nature, but once Cecelia found out that Teddy was the sole survivor of a plane crash, she opened up to her and told her about her own traumatic experience of a plane crash. The two subsequently became closer and helped each other through their PTSDs, keeping each other away from triggers and helping the other through panic attacks. This friendship soon turned into something more and the two began dating a couple of years into Teddy's career at Reyes & Co., after Teddy found herself getting over her feelings for Esperanza. Alexander Miller Alexander is Teddy's ex-husband and the father of Sammy Armstrong. They met at therapy and started dating, before getting married after Teddy discovered that she was pregnant. However, the two started arguing a lot after Sammy was born, leading to Alexander walking out on her, leaving only signed divorce papers behind.